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Overview
Anthonie Waterloo (1609–1690) was a Dutch Golden Age landscape etcher and painter. He is thought to have been born in Ryssel, the Flemish name for the modern day city of Lille near the France-Belgium border. As no records of any formal training as an artist have been discovered, he may have been self-taught. Although registered as a painter, he had little success in selling his own canvases and supported himself through his activities as an art dealer in addition to sales of his drawings and prints.
In 1640 he married in Amsterdam and in 1653 he left for Leeuwarden, before moving to Maarssen in 1655 where he lived until 1676. According to Arnold Houbraken (1660–1719), the Dutch painter and writer, Waterloo was good friends with the painter Jan Weenix (1640–1719). Weenix told Houbraken that he often visited Waterloo at his house between Maarssen and Breukelen, to decorate his landscapes with animals and other objects.
Waterloo’s art dealership exposed him to the work of a number of leading landscape artists such as Jacob van Ruisdael (1628–1682), Simon de Vlieger (1601–1653), Roelant Roghman (1627–1692) and Caesar van Everdingen (1616–1678), from whom he absorbed a variety of influences.
Waterloo was among the first artists to have established a reputation almost entirely based upon his work as a draftsman. He also produced many etchings which increased his popularity and extended his influence into the 18th century and beyond. Waterloo was active in Amsterdam, Leeuwarden and Utrecht, where he died in 1690.
Te Papa currently has 44 works by Anthonie Waterloo in its collection. The huge majority – all apart from a more recently acquired print and drawing – were presented to the Colonial Museum by Bishop Ditlev Monrad in 1869. This etching, #45 in the Waterloo volume of Hollstein's Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, comes from a series entitled Six landscapes, a complete set of which is in our collection (H41-46). In all, there are prints from four other series of the same title in the collection, H34, the complete sets H59-64 and H71-76, and a partial set of H89-94. The print here depicts, as the title suggests, a shepherd and two travellers crossing a wooden bridge which spans a wild stream littered with rocks and tree trunks. A picturesque old wooden shed stands on the right. Although there is no record of Waterloo having gone to southern Europe, the dramatic terrain suggests and awareness of the sublime landscapes favoured by Waterloo's Italian near contemporary, Salvator Rosa. His Dutch compatriots also enjoyed depicting Italianate drama rather than the notoriously flat terrain on their doorstep.
Sources:
British Museum Collection online, https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3129154&partId=1& amp; amp; amp; amp;searchText=waterloo+six+landscapes+bridge&page=1
'A. Waterloo', https://www.hollstein.com/dutch/a-waterloo.html
Wikipedia, ‘Anthonie Waterloo’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonie_Waterloo
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art May 2019